Public Talk with La Caoba, Nazanin Hafez and Elisa Deutloff, moderated by Franziska Nori

29.06.2025, 15:00

La Caoba is an intercultural collective developed by Larry Bonćhaka and Sopo Kashakashvili. It was founded to support environmental restoration, sustainable community development, and economic empowerment. By integrating large-scale reforestation projects in Ghana with community-led initiatives, La Caoba aims to create self-sustaining ecosystems where humans and nature thrive together. Throughout the exhibition, workshops, research-based contributions, and materials on agriculture, food trade, and transportation animate the space.

Nazanin Hafez’s  work engages with her personal experience of political repression under the Iranian regime. She examines the relationship between image and oppression, representation and censorship, visibility and concealment. Using digital and analogue photography, film, and collage, she constructs resistant counter-images. Hafez has woven contrasting realities of contemporary Iran into a spatial installation. Collages transform fragments of state and public propaganda into image machines. In a separate room, we see large-format portraits of women who present themselves proudly and freely.

Elisa Deutloff works with artificial intelligence. She has created an intimate experience in which visitors pose questions to a chatbot. Surprisingly, the AI responds in the visitor’s own voice. As visitors enter the space and read a poem aloud, the learning system generates a voice replica. This addresses a growing phenomenon among today’s generations: AI is increasingly experienced as an artificial companion. This trend is spreading widely. Even AI-based psychotherapy apps are seeing increased use.

At the public discussion, moderated by Franziska Nori, you will have the opportunity to meet three of the twelve participating artists from the exhibition And This is Us 2025 – Young Artists Based in Frankfurt and engage in dialogue with them.

Admission to the public discussion is €5 plus entry to the exhibition. The talk will take place in English and German.